Television.

`Cops' File Bulges With Rules Broken, Viewers Captured

February 18, 1993|By Steven Cole Smith, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

VENICE BEACH, Calif. — John Langley and Malcolm Barbour, creators of the Fox-Ch. 32 series "Cops," an against-the-odds success that has influenced a half-dozen other shows since its premiere in 1989, laughed when asked if there's a significant burnout factor with their crews, who must follow police officers into the most dangerous situations.

"Burnout?" Langley says. "More like snap, crackle and pop! It's fizzle, sizzle, then snap, crackle and pop. If we get two seasons out of a cameraman, we're doing great. It's an intense, draining experience. Even the cops get to relax once in a while, but the cameramen have to be keyed up for anything that happens."

"Cops" photographers and sound technicians have suffered plenty of bumps and bruises, a couple of broken legs, and recently one was smacked in the head by an annoyed suspect wielding a 2-by-4. But that's what it takes to gather enough footage to make an episode of the show. "For every hour that airs, we film about 100 hours' worth," Langley says.

Last summer, crews from "Cops" descended on Ft. Worth to ride with the city's Police Department. The first of the resulting episodes airs Saturday night, and the episodes will air through the rest of February. Ft. Worth joins previous police departments featured in "Cops," including Houston, San Diego, Memphis, New Orleans, Kansas City, Portland, Ore., and Anchorage, as well as overseas locations that include London and Moscow.

"We were really pleased with what we got in Ft. Worth," Langley says. That's obvious: February is a ratings-intensive "sweeps" month, when all the networks try to air their best programming, because ratings earned during sweeps dictate advertising rates. In fact, Fox plans a one-hour "Best of Cops" special for 9 p.m. Sunday on WFLD-Ch. 32, with highlights from the show's first five seasons.

"Cops," Langley says, fulfills a need that was once served by the press, back when newspapers did a lot more crime reporting, and humanized the cop on the beat. Now, he says, "There's often an adversarial relationship between the police and the press. We fill a void. We show the public that these people are human beings, who do a difficult job, and take a lot of guff and a lot of grief."

Langley came up with the idea, and he and Barbour insisted that the show remain true to that concept-no host, no narrator, "as close as you can get to pure documentary," Langley says. "Pure" is a near-impossible goal, if a show is to be entertaining, too. C-Span, the cable network that often just lets the camera run during political speeches and meetings, is essentially pure documentary, "but it's often so boring that you snore right through it," Langley says. Segments of "Cops" are edited for flow, and flow only.

As you would suspect, such a revolutionary idea was a tough sell. ABC, CBS and NBC passed on the idea. "There was only resistance," Langley says. "Every network slammed the door in our faces. They said it won't work."

"They said it would be a legal nightmare," Barbour says. " `No one will sign releases. The cops won't cooperate.' The bottom line was, they said, `You kick down a door this week, what are you going to do next week, and the week after? Kick down more doors? It'll be repetitive.'

"And we said, `No, behind the door, there'll be a different story every time.' "

Only Fox, known for taking chances, was willing to give the producers a shot. It didn't hurt that the average 30-minute situation comedy can cost $650,000 per episode to produce; "Cops" could be made for a third of that.

It took a while for "Cops" to gain its audience, and no doubt it didn't hurt that even with low ratings, the show was a moneymaker. Now ratings are very respectable for the 7 p.m. Saturday episode, and-odd as it may be-even better for the 7:30 p.m. episode, which is always a repeat of a past show (reruns also are shown at 6:30 p.m. daily on Channel 32).

Likely, those other networks are kicking themselves now: ABC even commissioned a former "Cops" producer to develop a clone: "American Detective."

It also helps that 112 "Cops" episodes are now in syndication, meaning stations in all the major markets air repeats of the show five days a week. "Syndication has given us a whole new audience," Barbour says. "People who hadn't seen us on Saturdays have discovered us, and they're tuning in."

So far, the "legal nightmare" aspect that Barbour and Langley were so often warned about has not materialized, nor have the dire warnings that police departments and officers would not cooperate. Now that the show has earned a reputation as being fair to the police departments involved, the producers have city officials calling the producers, offering to host the show.

And the officers with whom the camera crew rides quickly get used to it, Barbour says. "Sometimes they say that when we leave, they feel like they're losing their backup."